CIA Hosting Weblogs for Intelligence Information Gathering
by NEWS RELEASE ODNI Announces Establishment of Open Source Center The Center’s functions will include collection, analysis and research, training and information technology management to facilitate government-wide access and use. The Center will build on the established expertise of the CIA’s Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), which has provided the U.S. Government a broad range of highly valued products and services since 1941. The Director of the CIA will administer the Center on behalf of the DNI. Mr. Naquin will execute the DNI’s policy and guidance provided by the Assistant Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Open Source. The Assistant Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Open Source will be announced in the near future.The CIA now has its own bloggers.
Susan B. Glasser
The Washington Post
Read here full article by Susan Glasser of Washington Post
In a bow to the rise of Internet-era secrets hidden in plain view, the CIA has started hosting Web logs with the latest information on topics including North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il's public visit to a military installation -- his 38th this year -- and the Burmese media's silence on a ministry reshuffling.
CIA even has a blog on blogs, dedicated to cracking the code of what useful information can be gleaned from the rapidly expanding milieu of online journals and weird electronic memorabilia warehoused on the Net.
The blogs are posted on an unclassified, government-wide Web site called the DNI Open Source Center.
The Center had retooled its Internet efforts and added a new video database that makes all its archives available online.
There is an upgraded Web site with the blogs and homepages for key intelligence topics, such as Osama bin Laden, Iraq insurgency leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, China and even avian flu.
The Center officially started this month under the aegis of the new director for national intelligence.... decentralized and insufficient efforts to tap into the huge realm of public information in the Internet era.
The toughest challenge for the Center is proving its mettle inside a skeptical intelligence community, in which the stolen secret has long been prized above the publicly available gem.
Although the center's Web site is unclassified and available across the government, at the moment it has just 6,500 users with active accounts.
The Open Source Center began life as the Foreign Broadcast Information Service -- FBIS to insiders -- in 1941, when it was charged with monitoring publicly available media and translating it.
At the height of the Cold War, it was FBIS translators who pored through the latest issues of Izvestia and Pravda from the Soviet Union, providing the little hints such as a word change that might signal something broader for the CIA's Kremlinologists.
By the 1990s, the office had fallen on hard times.
Sept. 11 gave it new purpose, as "open source" became an intelligence buzzword. Across government, policymakers began to debate how to find the nuggets of genuine information hidden in the Internet avalanche.
Not long ago a former senior government terrorism analyst recalled he was teaching a class to future CIA intelligence analysts that included a PowerPoint presentation on al-Qaida's post-Sept. 11 evolution.Two men in the back of the class came up to the instructor after the presentation.
Where, they asked, did he get a particular image from Iraq? It's classified, they insisted.
The former analyst laughed.
He had taken it from a gruesome Web site that compiles terrorist atrocity videos along with pornography.
November 8, 2005
ODNI News Release No. 6-05
The Director of National Intelligence, John D. Negroponte, and the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Porter J. Goss, today announced the creation of the DNI Open Source Center.
“The Open Source Center is the centerpiece of my response to the WMD Commission’s recommendations calling for the Intelligence Community to devote more attention and resources to exploiting openly available information,” said John D. Negroponte, Director of National Intelligence.
Based at the CIA, the Center will advance the Intelligence Community’s exploitation of openly available information to include the Internet, databases, press, radio, television, video, geospatial data, photos and commercial imagery.
Mr. Douglas J. Naquin, a senior CIA manager with extensive experience in open source and information technology, will be the Center’s director. Two deputies will assist him: the Deputy for Community Integration and the Deputy for Open Source Operations.
The Center’s establishment is a step toward The National Intelligence Strategy of the United States of America goal to build an integrated intelligence capability and tap expertise where it resides.
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